Socrates sought truth and pure wisdom. He detested bodily ornaments and societal success and was not concerned with material things. He shared the wisdom that he had acquired by trusting only his soul. He defended the idea of only being able to access the purest form of wisdom after death, yet lived his life in a constant search for it.
Socrates believed that things such as truth and wisdom could only be obtained with the soul, and therefore reasoned that while they were alive they must be in a constant process of trying to separate their soul from their body. Many people are so frequently distorted by their bodily senses that they neglect the study of philosophy and forget what they intended to search for. True philosophers never stop searching …show more content…
Socrates encourages others to only trust the soul because “investigation through the eyes is full of deceit” (Plato 121). The eyes and our other senses mislead and distract us from what we should be searching for. They can lead us down very dark, unpropitious paths. Socrates proclaims that “he will do this most perfectly who approaches the object with thought alone, without associating any sight with his thought, or dragging in any sense of perception with his reasoning, but who, using pure thought alone, tries to track down each reality pure and by itself, freeing himself as far as possible from… the whole body, because the body confuses the soul and does not allow it to acquire truth and wisdom whenever it is associated with it” (Plato, 103). Tracking down each reality pure and by itself, with thought alone, will ironically “open our eyes” to the truth within it. Simmias expresses that in no way has he ever seen things such as “the Beautiful and the Good” with his eyes, nor has he ever grasped “things such as Bigness, Health, and Strength…” or “the reality of all other things” (Plato, 102), for reality, in his mind, is the perception of it from his soul. I have tasted a smidgen of this when I have gone to a physically beautiful area to meditate. Although I had also been experiencing it with my bodily senses, during my meditation I had felt my soul experience it in a different way. Truthful things such as the beautiful and the good can only be apprehended in a pure form by the
Socrates believed that things such as truth and wisdom could only be obtained with the soul, and therefore reasoned that while they were alive they must be in a constant process of trying to separate their soul from their body. Many people are so frequently distorted by their bodily senses that they neglect the study of philosophy and forget what they intended to search for. True philosophers never stop searching …show more content…
Socrates encourages others to only trust the soul because “investigation through the eyes is full of deceit” (Plato 121). The eyes and our other senses mislead and distract us from what we should be searching for. They can lead us down very dark, unpropitious paths. Socrates proclaims that “he will do this most perfectly who approaches the object with thought alone, without associating any sight with his thought, or dragging in any sense of perception with his reasoning, but who, using pure thought alone, tries to track down each reality pure and by itself, freeing himself as far as possible from… the whole body, because the body confuses the soul and does not allow it to acquire truth and wisdom whenever it is associated with it” (Plato, 103). Tracking down each reality pure and by itself, with thought alone, will ironically “open our eyes” to the truth within it. Simmias expresses that in no way has he ever seen things such as “the Beautiful and the Good” with his eyes, nor has he ever grasped “things such as Bigness, Health, and Strength…” or “the reality of all other things” (Plato, 102), for reality, in his mind, is the perception of it from his soul. I have tasted a smidgen of this when I have gone to a physically beautiful area to meditate. Although I had also been experiencing it with my bodily senses, during my meditation I had felt my soul experience it in a different way. Truthful things such as the beautiful and the good can only be apprehended in a pure form by the